


Two Funerals

by Salomonderiel



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, No actual character deaths, conclusions, title is metaphorical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 09:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salomonderiel/pseuds/Salomonderiel
Summary: "Don't die, master, but listen and live for many years; for the greatest thing a man can be guilty of in this life, is to let himself die outright, without being slain by any person whatever, or destroyed by any other weapon than the hands of melancholy."After the penultimate episode, I swore that if Black Sails didn't give us Silver's backstory, I would; when the finale came out, it gave me the perfect setting in which to do so. A sort of farewell for Silver and Flint, finally accepting their story's end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fucking show, man.   
> I went through far too much effort to find the quote in both english and spanish, so I'm so sorry if I fucked up. There was only so much time I was willing to spend on such a small part. Doesn't help that the only spanish I know is how to count to ten. Ish.  
> PS, don't read too much into Flint's motivations and that quote, it'll just make you sad.

The passenger had caused no trouble for several days, but that did not mean that the guards stationed at the door were any more relaxed. As Silver passed, he noticed the nervous flicker in the men’s eyes, the fingers tapping on sword hilts, darting over the trigger guard of their pistols. These were men he’d trust to set themselves on fire if he asked them to; but then, fear is a tricky emotion to master. Especially with something you’ve feared for this long, with this much effort.

“You need someone with you, Captain?”

_Captain_.

They asked him this every time he passed. He’d stopped answering at this point.

He unlocked the door, slipping the heavy key back into his pocket as he gently pushed the door open.

The room was still dark, regardless of the several portholes, and the four or five lanterns that littered the room. With most prisoners, it was perfectly acceptable to keep them enshrined in darkness, shackled in pitch black to a wall – a world – they could not make out. But this man’s jail was formed of a different kind, his peace maintained in a different way.

Books. The room was littered with them, but Silver knew Flint better than to suppose there was no order in the chaos. It was the first stop they had made, after victory – of a sort – had been won on Skeleton Island. Supplies for the trip, and books to keep Flint contained, if not willingly in this world, then at least willingly in another.

He was reading now. What book, Silver couldn’t make out at his distance, with the low light. Something small, brown binding, well worn. Most of them were – it was hard to get anything new this far from civilisation, he’d just found whatever he could, ordering the men to shove whatever paper they could find into a crate. If they thought him mad for it, then it was just one more thing to add to the long list. Hands had thought it a waste, but Silver was over caring what that man thought. Hands’ opinions, generally the sensible opinions, never seemed to give him an ending he wanted.

Though Silver had yet to master the art of moving quietly on a crutch, Flint made no motion to indicate he heard the man approaching. Something inside him hurting at the lack of response, Silver stayed silent, lowering himself onto an upturned barrel beside where the man himself was curled up on the wooden floor, head buried in faded words.

Eventually – and it was a long eventually, Silver desperate that for once he would get some form of acknowledgement without asking for it – Silver reached down, picking up one of the most worn novels, closest to Flint’s reach. _Don Quixote_ , in its original Spanish. Silver smiled to himself, wondering how many of the books they’d grabbed had been in foreign languages, and how many of those foreign languages his former captain could speak. Spanish, Silver was pretty certain, was one Flint was almost fluent in.

_Don Quijote de la Mancha_. Silver flicked through the pages; whoever the previous owner had been had gone through the book, carefully underlining passages with delicate black marks, scribbled stars noting favourite passages. Silver perused quietly until he found something familiar. “‘No se muera vuestra merced, señor mío, sino tome mi consejo y viva muchos años,” he said quietly, fully aware that his own accent was shifting the words into something not quite Spanish. “‘Porque la mayor locura que puede hacer un hombre en esta vida es dejarse morir, sin más ni más, sin que nadie le mate, ni otras manos le acaben que las de la melancolía…’”

The words felt heavy on his tongue, but not unfamiliar.

There was the soft sound of Flint closing his book. Silver waited.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Flint muttered. He never spoke any louder than a whisper, these days. Silver tried not to think why, only hoped it wouldn’t last long.

Silver shrugged, placing _Don Quixote_ back where it had been. “I don’t, not really,” he admitted truthfully. “I speak Portuguese. Written, it’s easy enough to move from one to the other.”

All this time. All this time, and Flint was only learning this now. Quietly, gently, Flint opened his book again and started reading.

John watched him. He licked his lips, looked at his fingers, brushed a strand of hair from his face. “John Pickering.”

Flint sighed. “Who?”

“John Pickering. Me.” Silver breathed in hard, before forcing the air before his teeth. “That was my name, before your crew found me and turned me into John Silver.”

After that revelation, Flint didn’t move. Not once, not at all. His fingers stayed clenched around his book, chest stuck in place as he refused to breathe. “ _Pickering_? Why-”

“Because who the fuck is going to be scared of a man called Pickering, really, in a place like Nassau, on a pirate ship, and at that moment of time, faced with very angry, very bloodthirsty pirates in the process of killing every single one of my crewmates, staring at the sharp end of swords and unable to feel anything but the bloody crate of expensive cutlery constantly whacking against my ankles, ‘Silver’ seemed like a much better option.”

It was perhaps the most Silver had spoken in one go to anyone since the ship had left for Savannah. He was breathing heavily when he finished, trying to catch his breath.

Once again, all he could hear was Flint closing his book. “Your name – the name you chose,” Flint said softly, “The name now feared across most the continent and a fair bit beyond – came from you bruising your ankles against _a crate of silverware_?”

Silver snorted, a harsh burst of laughter cutting through what he’d intended to be a serious conversation. “Of course. Of course that’s what you’d take from this.”

“Well,” Flint said. “I can see why you wouldn’t want people to know that.”

_Me. Why wouldn’t you want me to know that_.

Sometimes, it hurt how well Silver had learned to read between James Flint’s lines.

“Pickering was my father’s name, Benjamin Pickering,” Silver continued, unable to pause, unwilling. “He was a merchant sailor from a rural town in northern England. My mother’s name was Maria de Sousa, a Portuguese woman he picked up in a port, brought home, married and knocked up, not necessarily in that order. Except, after all that, he couldn’t be asked with the effort to do the ‘father’ or ‘husband’ part, so vanished a few days after I was born. Ostensibly back to work on the ship, but you’d have presumed, in that case, he would have returned when the rest of his crew did. He didn’t.” Silver almost paused, but didn’t. “After that, it was just mum and I. I became ‘that Spanish kid’, because that’s how ignorant and cruel rural British towns can be. My mother, with her accent and poor English, was ‘that Spanish whore’. Kind of hard to buy food when the village thinks you’re the spawn of Satan’s mistress. Grocers gave us shit, bakers even less. And, when my mother got ill when I was about twelve, the doctor decided just to spit on the door of the Spanish whore’s house and mutter ‘good riddance’. I was an orphan at some point then, you see, I didn’t lie about that. The home for boys didn’t exist though, not to my knowledge. I packed what I could, made the trip to Liverpool – the nearest port – and tried to get work. When that didn’t work, I instead found a bunch of Irish workers who found it funny to teach this kid how to cheat at cards. I found that once you could convince a man that there was a Queen in your pack when it was actually down your trousers, you could convince anyone of pretty much… anything. Or maybe that was just me. Anyway, I conned, I cheated, I got on the wrong side of some people and did as my dear father had done – I ran off to sea. Did a few stints on a few ships, until eventually – well, the rest you know.”

“Until eventually you knocked your ankle against a crate of silverware and decided it made a better name than Pickering,” Flint muttered, with the closest thing to good humour he could show.

Silver smiled, as much as he was able. “You’re really not going to let that go?”

Flint didn’t respond to the question. In fact, Flint stayed silent for long enough that Silver considered leaving. Silver had nothing left to say, anyway.

“The only reason,” Flint said, his voice shaking with something akin to a fearful certainty, “The only reason you would be telling me this, is if you thought I would never again be in a position to use it against you.”

“I don’t think you _can_ use it against me, only _you_ think that,” Silver countered, the now old argument. “But I know you would look for it, nevertheless.”

“Unless I no longer found that I wanted to,” Flint continued, barely acknowledging Silver had spoken. “Unless I was no longer in a position to need to arm myself against you.”

“I do not think you have ever _wanted_ to arm yourself against me,” Silver said. “Neither of us _wants_ to have to defend ourselves against the other, to have to prepare ourselves to fight the other. That’s why we’re here, still here.”

Flint nodded, the book in his hands less being placed on the floor, than slipping from weak hands. “I – he’s alive, isn’t he?” he breathed. “T-” For a moment, Flint’s voice cut out. “Thomas.”

Silver swallowed, and nodded. “Yes.”

The man beside him choked on his own breath, hands clenching on something that wasn’t there. The figure curled, nails reaching to grip at the skin on his face, his neck, as his face pressed into his arms and chest to stop the tide of tears, of chest-wrenching sobs that would undoubtedly drown him until there was nothing left of him. Silver put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and, with some hesitation, leant forwards to press his lips to the roughly shaven head. “Not long now, James,” he muttered against the skin, the figure shaking under his touch. “I’ll have you home soon. I’m sorry.”

There was nothing to be done, not really. Careful not to disturb the protective web of books surrounding the man, Silver made his way from the room. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He locked the room without looking at the guards on either side.

He didn’t acknowledge the tears making tracks down his own face until he reached open air, could blame it on the sharp winds or bright sunlight.

He was, he knew, as much as he wanted to deny it, crying for two people.

“I’m sorry.”


End file.
